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From: Scott Belliston <[log in to unmask]>
TROPES OF UNIFICATION:
Community and Conflict in German Culture, 1848 - Present
2003 German Studies Conference at Stanford University
February 21-22, 2003
The graduate students of the Department of German Studies at Stanford
University invite proposals addressing issues of community formation and
dissolution. We are interested in topics that address the processes of
political, artistic, and social cohesion and conflict within the German
languages, cultures, and geographies. In what ways do the histories and
cultures of the German-speaking lands engender a particular perspective on
the ways in which people group themselves? How have people connected to
the German tradition or German geographies marked their association with
particular communities? In what ways have German intellectuals theorized or
reacted to historical and political transformations of communities within the
German tradition? In what ways does the act of constructing community
inherently presuppose the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others?
Paper topics may include:
- artistic/literary treatments of moments of German political unifications or
schisms (1848, 1871, 1918, 1945, 1990)
- construction and dissolution of literary/artistic communities
- cultural iconography of unification: architecture, technology
- definitions, transformations, and conflicts of gendered communities -
deutschsprachige Literatur/deutsche Literatur?
- dilemmas confronted by East German intellectuals, post-unification
- exile and expatriate communities
- German ways of conceptualizing a global community
- historical transformations of the concept 'unification'
- impact of the Wende on perceptions of past German unifications
- minority assimilation into majority culture
- minority community formation and dissolution
- myths of national unity, national consciousness
- the place of community/unification in postmodern theory
- popular culture and alternative lifestyles communities: clubs, movements,
societies
- rhetorical systems of separation and unification
- the role of the intellectual in community and national identity formation
- unification as metaphor/metaphors of unification
Proposal due date: November 15, 2002.
Send an electronic submission via email to:
Kristin Rebien <[log in to unmask]>
Scott Belliston <[log in to unmask]>
Or via mail to:
Tropes of Unification Conference
Department of German, Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2030
Scott Belliston
Ph. D. Candidate
Department of German Studies
Stanford University
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